Jim Shimabukuro

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Schools changing texting policies from eSchool News
Texting is one of the best ways to communicate with young people, but due to misconduct issues, many schools do not allow teachers and staff to communicate with students via texting. A school in Ohio sees the benefits of texting as a means of communication so is addressing the issue by sending home permission slips.

Technology is not used effectively in schools is a report from The Information Daily.com
The National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts (NESTA) in the UK has found that, despite schools spending millions of pounds on technology, it is not being used effectively. They found that teachers and pupils lack sufficient training in how to use technology as educational tools.

New frontier for scaling up online classes: credit by Justin Pope, AP Education Writer
MOOCs have opened up university courses to anyone who wants to take them. However, students do not receive university credit upon completion of these free courses. The sheer volume of students, grading, and concerns about cheating are some of the issues that Pope explores.

Formative Assessment Is Foundational to Blended Learning by Michael Horn and Heather Staker from THE Journal
After explaining what formative assessment is – ongoing assessment – Horn and Staker look at the importance of formative assessment in the blended environment. They assert that “formative assessment software appears to work best in blended learning environments if it helps students direct their own learning.”

9 Responses

[…] Schools changing texting policies from eSchool News Texting is one of the best ways to communicate with young people, but due to misconduct issues, many schools do not allow teachers and staff to c… […]

[…] Schools changing texting policies from eSchool News Texting is one of the best ways to communicate with young people, but due to misconduct issues, many schools do not allow teachers and staff to c… […]

[…] Schools changing texting policies from eSchool News Texting is one of the best ways to communicate with young people, but due to misconduct issues, many schools do not allow teachers and staff to c… […]

“They found that teachers and pupils lack sufficient training in how to use technology as educational tools.”

What about technology being easier to use? All of the blame does not go to training.

When you realize that professional development (PD) classes for teachers provide them with required credits for retaining certification and give them time off from teaching while having no requirement for success in these classes, you can see that teachers will sit in these classes and bring nothing from them back to the classroom. That’s your training.

Teachers are people too, just like students are. Without motivation and good pedagogy, PD is just a day of vacation. For these reasons, we cannot pin our hopes on training. Technology should be easy enough to use that teachers who are motivated can learn to use a given new technology in under an hour. However, applying it by inserting it into curricula may take longer, even much longer.

Moreover, educational technology should already be an “educational tool.” Technology that must be stretched, bent, and twisted to fit into classrooms does not properly belong there. And, just because a teacher becomes enamored of some technology does not mean that the students will benefit. IWBs are a case in point here.

The best educational technologies will fulfill two crucial goals: 1. easy insertion into a curriculum and 2. positive transformation of teaching/learning in classes, i.e. better learning outcomes. These are in addition to the obvious ones such as ease of use and low cost. BTW, the improvement in learning should be due to the technology, not the shiny new thing syndrome.

[…] Schools changing texting policies from eSchool News Texting is one of the best ways to communicate with young people, but due to misconduct issues, many schools do not allow teachers and staff to c… […]

[…] Schools changing texting policies from eSchool News Texting is one of the best ways to communicate with young people, but due to misconduct issues, many schools do not allow teachers and staff to c… […]

[…] Schools changing texting policies from eSchool News Texting is one of the best ways to communicate with young people, but due to misconduct issues, many schools do not allow teachers and staff to c… […]

[…] Schools changing texting policies from eSchool News Texting is one of the best ways to communicate with young people, but due to misconduct issues, many schools do not allow teachers and staff to communicate with students via texting. […]